head to head · open source
huginn vs hl
huginn has 50,269 GitHub stars, 4,339 forks, 698 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hl has 3,317 stars, 68 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped yesterday. huginn leads on adoption by 1,415% (50,269 vs 3,317 stars). huginn is written in Ruby under MIT; hl is written in Rust under MIT. huginn has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, hl 2%. huginn was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| huginn | hl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 68 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick huginn if
- You weight community size — 50K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick hl if
- You want the hl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and hl fits your workflow better
About huginn
What is Huginn? Huginn is a system for building agents that perform automated tasks for you online. They can read the web, watch for events, and take actions on your behalf. Huginn's Agents create and consume events, propagating them along a directed graph. Think of it as a hackable version of IFTTT or Zapier on your own server. You always know who has your data. You do. Here are some of the things that you can do with Huginn: Track the weather and get an email when it's going to rain (or snow) tomorrow ("Don't forget your umbrella!") List terms that you care about and receive email when their occurrence on…
read the full huginn overview →
About hl
hl [![Build Status][ci img]][ci] [![Coverage Status][cov img]][cov] [![Release][release img]][release] High performance log viewer and processor that transforms logs in JSON and logfmt formats into a human readable output. Built with efficiency in mind, it enables quick parsing and analysis of large log files with minimal overhead. Features overview Automatic Pager Integration : Automatically integrates with a pager for enhanced convenience, defaulting to less if available, but fully supporting any compatible pager. Log Streaming Mode : Enable log streaming with the P flag, which disables the pager. Field Based…
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Frequently asked questions
Is huginn or hl more popular?
huginn has 50,269 GitHub stars and hl has 3,317. huginn has the larger community by that measure.
Are huginn and hl free?
Both are open source. huginn is licensed under MIT and hl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between huginn and hl?
huginn is written in Ruby and hl in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, huginn or hl?
Choose huginn if you want the larger community (50,269 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose hl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.